Battleship the movie based on the decades old Battleship game (yes really) and is another popcorn movie that owes a lot to the Michael Bay style of movie making.

It is your standard alien invasion fare, this time being set in Hawaii.

I found it interesting that they didn't use 3D as this seems to be added to every single blockbuster movie that comes out. Apparently the director doesn't like 3D, though I wonder if some of it might have been because they were shooting on water and in tight spots so the big 3D cameras might have been a problem.

Overall:

Lots of fun watching things blow up! :-)

We all have media files to manage and after years of using XBMC I finally decided to give up and try something else.

Enter Plex, a media solution that is based on XBMC and has a few fundamental differences that make it a great solution that suits my needs. It has software for Mac, Windows and Linux.

Plex has (free) media server software that you install on your media server and this is the core of the Plex solution. It will index and sort all your various media into as many different groups as you desire to keep things organised exactly how you want them.

Next you have the (free) desktop client that connects to the Plex media server and allows you to view all the media that you have. You can have multiple desktop clients and there is a (non free) iOS and Android client. There are even LG TV clients. You can start viewing content on one client and then resume on another.

Then there is a bonus. You can create a freee 'myplex' account that allows you to bookmark or email links to videos that you see on the web which you can later view on your big screen TV, or any plex client. :-)

Sure Plex isn't perfect though it has some fundamental differences to other solutions that make it a great solution for managing your media needs.

Normally I don't go for iPad games as most of them get it wrong. Fairway Solitaire HD is a game that plays to the strength of the iPad platform and to top it off, it is free.:-)

Basically it is a modified solitaire game with a golf theme. There are all these great little touches in the game and definitely worth playing with audio on.

There are lots of great little touches that make the game great. From the gopher vs golfers, wild cards, trick cards, sand wedges, water hazards and announcers that will make comments during the game, all these little touches really make the game great.

Overall:

A great download. Pick up and play anytime and stop anytime.

For me Uncharted 2 was one of the greatest games ever made. It was a great single player game that had such a great story and action scenes it was hard to imagine that they would ever be able to top it.

Enter Uncharted 3. When I first read reviews of this game, there was something not quite right. Sure everyone praised it, though they always mentioned two things.

1. Aiming wasn't the same as Uncharted 2 and hence wasn't as good.
2. It wasn't 'better' than Uncharted 2.

So I held off and my 'buy it as soon as it gets released' mentality changed to, wait for it to drop in price. Then the game started getting game of the year awards. There were a lot of great games out last year so I figured that this had to be a good sign and so I went ahead and purchased.

This is definitely NOT game of the year. It isn't as good as the second one. Whereas Uncharted 2 had great storytelling, Uncharted 3 is more about amazing technology. Sure it is a solid game, but the storytelling isn't as good as the Uncharted 2.

The aiming was broken beyond belief. I played the whole game and then found out that they had released a patch to give you the option to have the same aiming system as Uncharted 2. This would probably have made the game 10 times more enjoyable for me, but I played the game they shipped and that aiming system was a broken mess in my mind.

So what was good? Tech wise this game is at the cutting edge. Some of the water physics are just amazing. 3D in the game is as sharp as 2D and looks fantastic. I played a few levels with the aiming patch and that fixed up 90% of my gameplay issues.

Overall:

I feel like the technology took over. Uncharted 3 lacked the soul of Uncharted 2. For me despite the game being pretty good, it was a big disappointment after the amazing Uncharted 2.

John Carter, what a name for a movie. I had no idea that this movie even existed until I saw the trailer while watching another movie.

John Carter is a human being who is magically/mysteriously transported to Mars and thanks to the differeing gravities he finds he can jump extremely high. Enter a whole bunch of alien races with some that look the same as humans and the movie writes itself. :-)

While this is a Disney movie, apparently it was made by the guys at Pixar, this being their first live action movie and a departure from other Pixar movies they didn't put the Pixar name on it, though it defintely has their high quality touches on it.

Suttle use of 3D in the movie helps things pop, though you probably wouldn't notice any difference if it was 2D only.

Overall:

Epic summer blockbuster film that ticks all the right boxes for lots of fun. :-)

Skyrim (technically The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, but damn that is a long name) is an epic fantasy role playing game where you get to fight Dragons! Lots and lots of them. :-)

When I first heard of Skyrim I was a bit skeptical as they were making some big promises. Most games will have dragons as a big boss that you fight at the end of a lengthy quest. Skyrim promised lots of dragon battles. Big epic dragon battles. I have to admit that I thought this would be lame, though in this case I was happily surprised.

Skyrim is an open world game. You can literally see a giant mountain in the distance and then walk/ride your way over there. Along the way you an encounter various good and bad guys and even the occasional woolly mammoth. Also Dragons!

The world of Skyrim really feels like a living and breathing thing, sure characters are in the same places to give quests, though once you head out into the world you can come over a hill and see a dragon fighting a wooly mammoth with giants trying to protect the wooly mammoth (who is their pet). Scenes like this really make Skyrim stand out.

While Skyrim is number 5 in the series I barely remember the previous games, though this is not a problem as Skyrim is set 200 years after the previous game so no one cares what happened back then. :-)

Skyrim still has a lot of the usual quest systems that you find in a fantasy game, though a lot of these quests are really well thought out and have multiple stages to them. They can really draw you into the game and are really well done.

Levelling up your character is done very differently to your classic RPG, you actually level up by using things. So if you use a sword, your one handed goes up. Use magic and that magic type will level up. It's something that just happens without you having to worry about it. The great thing is that you just keep doing what is fun (like setting bad guys on fire) and not worry about micromanaging your abilities.

Sure there are a few quirks here and there such as really long (and often) loading times. The loading time issue appears to be due to the limitations of the 360 as it doesn't happen on the PC and it makes me start to wonder about the next generation of consoles.

Overall: A great epic game that is probably game of the year. Tons of fun and many hours spent and I still haven't covered all the possibilities that the game has to offer.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows is a worthy sequel to its predecessor. The same director/actors are back and using the great effects/style of the first movie in new and exciting ways.

While it is a sequel, they set the movie a year later and I didn't feel like I needed to have seen the first movie to get everything that was going on. This time around Sherlock is going directly up against Moriarty.

I really enjoyed the intense slow motion scenes in Sherlock Homles: A Game of Shadoes, so that even though everything is moving slowly, there is a lot going on so you feel like it could go even slower. They deftly avoid the 'I will just check my watch while wating for things to speed up' trap. :-)

The EPIC battle of minds between Moriarty and Holmes at the end of the film is a fantastic end to a great film and to watch the two sharpest minds go against each other is reallly done well.

Overall: Another great movie and a great Sherlock Holmes tale. Can't wait to see it again on BluRay. :-)